


Measures of Love

by vials



Category: Declare - Tim Powers
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Paranormal, it's basically like a history I suppose, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 15:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11107008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: The inexplicable has been consistent all throughout Kim's life. Each of his four wives brushed against it, and no two of them ever responded in the same way. For Kim, it's all an exhausting balancing act.





	Measures of Love

**Litzi**

Litzi was his first, in every respect. Kim had thought it was an old cliché, never forgetting your first, but he knew from the moment he met her and every day thereafter that he would never forget Litzi, no matter how many times he was lucky to love after her. Not that he ever stopped loving her, not really. She taught him everything he knew about what being in love was like, and for that he knew she would never quite leave him, no matter what transpired between them. Perhaps that was why he told her. He supposed it was, because it would have been just like him in those days: he had been younger, more loose-lipped, more carefree with what he said and in the early days love was something that one could get drunk on. Later he would think it was for the best that he didn’t meet her later in life, because lord knows what he would have said to her. Not that she would have told a soul.

“You’re so warm,” she murmured to him one night, her head resting on his chest and her body curled around him so as little of her was touching the snow as possible. It had become something of a tradition of theirs, even though by this point they had plenty of other places they could sneak off to, should they want some alone time. The snow was deep enough that if Kim turned his head all he could see was white, but Litzi was right – he didn’t feel cold at all, and indeed the snow was melting around him at a wider distance than he would have expected. 

“I s-suppose that’s g-good for buh-both of us,” he said, not really assigning it much thought. He was too relaxed, the snow muffling the sounds of anything that could be around them, and right now he needed these moments more than anything, where there was nothing to worry about aside from the fact that eventually he would have to get up and walk home. He could happily lay there all night, but for all his warmth he didn’t think Litzi would be a fan of the idea. 

“Have you always had your stutter?” Litzi asked, not for the first time. She liked to quiz him during moments where she thought his guard would be down – when he was drunk, when he was tired, after their time together. He liked it about her. She was constantly testing him, making sure everything he said was truth, and he had noticed her doing it to countless others. It was impossible to get anything past Litzi, so Kim never bothered to try. 

“N-not when I was v- _very_ young,” he said. “I sup-suppose I didn’t know enough words then. B-but once I s-s-started to s-speak in s-sentences, it was there.”

“Does it annoy you?”

“S-s—god damn it – yes, sometimes. Mostly when I’m t-trying to say s-something _quickly_ , or I th-think it’s detracting from my point.”

“Well, I think it’s rather cute,” Litzi announced, and despite himself, Kim did feel a bit better about that. “Did you get teased for it?”

“N-no, actually,” Kim said, smiling. “Not past friends m-making lighthearted j-jokes about it, anyway, and e-everyone did that. Nobody ever r-really insulted me for it, which was n-nice.”

“You’re lucky,” Litzi said, laughing. “I have heard terrible things about public schoolboys in England.”

“W-what have you heard?”

“I’ve heard you’re all homosexual, each and every one of you.”

Kim laughed. “D-do you still th-think that now?”

“I think I may have recused you in time. Come, though. We should head back. It would be no use to save you and then have you freeze to death. Or me, for that matter.”

Reluctantly Kim allowed her to untangle herself from him, and they dressed quickly, Litzi shivering by the end of it. Kim had begun to feel the cold, but he was certainly not as bad off as he should have been. Around them the field was covered in untouched snow, broken only by the footsteps that had lead them to their spot. It was odd to think that soon the pristine snow ahead of them would be broken by their tracks, almost as though they shouldn’t be there, as though he and Litzi were hiding. The sky was clear above them, the stars fantastically visible in the dark countryside, but Kim knew the chances of their tracks being gone by morning were still high. The snow had been coming on and off all day, and it was a comfort. Sometimes, he liked to think that he was leaving no evidence behind. It was an odd thrill, to know that he and Litzi had been here and that by morning, there would be no evidence of it aside from their shared knowledge. 

“Oh! A star!” Litzi pointed upward, where Kim just made out the flash of a shooting star as it streaked across the sky, vanishing as quickly as it had come. “I love those. They’re so _strange_.” 

“Do you -believe in making w-wishes on them?” Kim asked, and Litzi laughed.

“Not really. They’re pretty to look at, but I don’t know if I see them as any kind of wish granter. What about you? Is that something you all do at public school? Hold hands and make wishes on stars?”

“Oh, a-all the time,” Kim said, seriously, and Litzi laughed again. 

“I thought you were the type to believe in all that. It would match you. You look so far away sometimes.”

“F-far away?” Kim asked. They began to walk through the snow, their shoes crunching loudly. In the silence of the countryside around them, the sound seemed to travel too far. 

“Yes. You seem in a world of your own sometimes. Do you daydream?”

“N-not often, really,” Kim said. “I s-suppose I d-don’t realise I’m d-doing it.” 

Litzi looked up again, the moonlight shining silver over her face. She didn’t notice that Kim decided against it – as pretty as the night sky was, looking up for too long gave him vertigo, and he would rather not endure a headache for the rest of the night. He wondered what Litzi would think if she knew that things went far beyond wishing on stars with him; that if that was the only thing he believed in – which, ironically, he didn’t – it would be the most normal part about him.

“D-do you believe in a-anything strange?” he asked, on impulse, and Litzi looked at him, smiling as they fell into step beside one another.

“You mean like, religiously? Or something else?”

“Anything, really.”

“I suppose?” Litzi said thoughtfully. “I don’t know. It seems silly, but sometimes I wonder if it would be sillier to think there was nothing. What about you?”

“I th-think some r-really strange s-shit can happen,” Kim said, before he let out a brief laugh. It was an understatement, really. 

“Like what?” Litzi was curious, but he could tell she was also guarded, unsure as to whether or not Kim was trying to fool her. “It would make sense, I suppose. You English are a strange bunch of people. I think being surrounded by all that water goes to your head.”

Kim laughed. “W-which long-winded criticism did you r-read that f-from?”

“I’ll leave you to guess,” Litzi teased. “But tell me. Have you ever seen anything?”

“I’ve seen lots of things,” Kim said, so seriously that he could sense Litzi no longer thought he was trying to fool her. The truth was that he didn’t know where to begin. What could he tell her? What would she believe? He could tell her about shadows and dreams and foxes with human eyes, about things too big to fit in the bodies containing them, about the horizon and the sky and the stars and the earth beneath his feet moving in ways they shouldn’t. He could tell her about feeling too big for his own body, about facing down things that would kill a normal man to even look upon. He could tell her all of that, but would she believe it? Or would she just think he was crazy? 

Not that she would leave him, or start disliking him. She was quite enamoured by the idea of the eccentric British man, and Kim certainly provided that, with his stutter and his far away thoughts and his ghost stories. But he didn’t think he could stand not being taken seriously, no matter how endeared she was. It was a lot to carry on his own. He didn’t know what he would think if somebody looked at what constantly rested on his shoulders and put it down to tall tales. 

“Ghosts?” Litzi prompted, after Kim didn’t immediately follow up. 

“N-not exactly,” Kim said. “O-other things. I don’t know what you would c-call them. They’re n-not ghosts, because they’re n-n-n— _damn_ – they aren’t h-human.” 

“So demons? Or monsters?” Litzi asked lightly. “I don’t know if I believe in those.”

“N-no, not that, either,” Kim said, frowning slightly. “I d-don’t know h-how to e-ex— _describe_ it, actually. They’re j-just _things_.”

“And you can see them?”

“Y-yes.”

“For how long?”

“E-ever since I was a ch-child,” Kim said, and to his surprise Litzi still seemed open to the idea; she hadn’t scoffed at him yet, or begun to tease him about his Englishness. “I s-saw something t-terrible as a ch-child, apparently.”

He could feel the chill now. He wasn’t sure if it was a coincidence or something else to worry about, but evidently Litzi felt something too because she slipped her hand into his and squeezed. They were silent as they crossed the field, the only sound the crunching of the snow and the occasional call of a bird. It was eerie, Kim thought, but not in some of the ways that he had experienced the feeling. This was normal unnerving – the kind of thing people sought out, he supposed, when they would crowd around camp fires and tell one another ghost stories. He felt a pang of envy. It would be nice, he thought, to be able to play with such things. To think that they were only stories. 

“What did you see?” Litzi asked, once they had climbed over the fence and were out of the field, walking up beside the road instead. Ahead of them, the lights of the town seemed to embolden them both.

“I d-don’t know if you would b-believe me,” Kim said, and Litzi tightened her grip on his hand.

“I don’t think there’s anything I would disbelieve about you, Kim. Tell me.”

So he did.

**Aileen**

Aileen was crazy, though she hadn’t always been. Kim couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was that had set her off, but the fact remained that while she had been eccentric at the beginning of their relationship she was downright deranged towards the end of it. For the most part it seemed straightforward: the woman craved attention and would seemingly do anything to get it, though thankfully she refrained from harming their children. Anything else was fair game – she would hurt herself, she would vanish, she would starve herself, she would fake illnesses and conspire to contract real ones. Kim had been sympathetic for years, and then annoyed, and then a combination of the stress Aileen’s behaviour took on him and on their children made him actively dislike her. It was a shame. They had had a good life together – why did she insist on ruining things?

“She’s a nutcase, that one,” Guy Burgess would tell him, frequently, every time the subject came up. “An absolute nutter.”

“Y-yes, thank you, G-Guy,” Kim would reply wearily, and Guy would grin into his wine glass.

The main problem was, Kim found, working out what part of Aileen’s hysterics were a cry for attention and what part of them were legitimate. He couldn’t explain it adequately, but there had always been something other about Aileen, and he thought she could see it in him, too. He couldn’t forget the way she looked at him sometimes, when he woke from his yearly nightmares to find her staring at him with increasing suspicion year after year. He couldn’t forget how she had looked at him during those improvised baptisms: he had gotten away with it with Josephine, but she had caught him with both Miranda and John. She had missed Thomas, but Kim knew that she didn’t believe for a moment that little Harry had simple fallen into the water of his own accord. 

As she got worse it was easy to believe that it was simply some form of psychosis, but Aileen was not a stupid woman because if she had been, Kim would have never married her. Sometimes he thought about it in great detail, trying to pinpoint where things had started their way towards the situation they were in, and he always arrived at one conclusion. It was Turkey. She had started to really lose her mind in Turkey. If he thought about it, Kim was convinced he knew precisely when, too.

Aileen had been having one of her moods for several days, thanks to the sudden and rowdy arrival of Guy. Kim and Guy had been drinking that night and had planned to go out and continue, but first Kim had gone upstairs to put his children to bed. He had just shut out the light when there was an almighty crash from downstairs; he sighed, the expected outbreak of questions from his children erupting immediately.

“Settle d-down,” he told them, calling loudly enough so everyone could hear. “You k-know it’s probably just your u-uncle Guy as usual.”

That caused an outbreak of giggles but everyone quietened; they knew by now that they didn’t have to be present for all of “uncle” Guy’s calamities, because no doubt there would be lots more to follow. Kim made sure everybody was staying where they were and then went downstairs, following the hall through the kitchen, where he had heard the sound. 

Aileen was standing stock still in the middle of the kitchen, staring out of the window. She seemed to have frozen, and Kim, not in the mood, was almost about to snap at her before he saw the look on her face. She was pale, her face slack with shock, and Kim looked first from her and then over to Guy, who was standing nearby and looking at him rather helplessly.

“Wasn’t me this time, old boy,” he said. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her.”

“Aileen,” Kim said, firmly, but his wife didn’t respond. “G-Guy. A m-minute, please?”

For once, Guy didn’t look as though he wanted to stick around. He quickly cleared out, and Kim heard his feet hurrying back up the hallway. 

Kim approached Aileen and gently put a hand on her shoulder. He squeezed, and she jumped slightly, looking around wildly before her eyes settled on him. She looked genuinely surprised to see him there; she glanced down at the floor, seeing the plate she had dropped was shattered at her feet. She frowned in confusion and looked at Kim again. 

“Are you a-all right?” Kim asked, genuinely concerned. She must have heard the sincerity in his voice because her concerned look deepened.

“I don’t –” she began, and then she let out a gasp and threw her hands to her mouth. “The fox! Kim! Is the – is it still out there? Oh, god, that _dreadful_ thing!”

Kim felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, but he tried to keep it off his face.

“W-what fox?” he asked. “D-did it get in the h-house?” 

“No!” Aileen shook her head wildly, stepping around the broken plate and over to the window. “It was right here. You _must_ believe me, Kim. I’ve seen it a couple of times and I thought it was rummaging through the rubbish, but it always looked so _odd_. I just saw it! It was peering in through the window, it looked right at me! And – oh god, the most _horrible_ thing. It had –”

“Human eyes,” Kim said, quietly, barely realising. Aileen looked at him, her face flashing between shock and anger and relief.

“You believe me! You see it too!”

It was the first time there had ever been such open acknowledgement between them. Looking at her then, Kim knew that she had always known a lot more than she had been letting on, and while he knew there was no way in hell that she would ever guess the intricate details, he knew that she had noticed a lot more than anyone else. Of course she would – she lived with him. She had carried his children. He couldn’t possibly expect her to live so closely to the Philby bloodline, and for so long, without noticing something.

He knew he would never tell her what was going on. When he looked back, he didn’t even know if he should have told Litzi. He didn’t regret it but he wondered if he should have done; he wasn’t going to take the risk with Aileen. No, he wouldn’t tell her what was going on but he would at least give her this. He feared what might happen otherwise. She might finally lose control of herself completely.

“Yes, I’ve s-seen it,” he said. “It’s n-nothing to w-worry about, Aileen. It w-won’t harm you, and it won’t c-come inside. It’s j-just c-coming close to the h-house for the food.”

“But its _eyes_ ,” Aileen said, visibly shuddering. “You can’t tell me those eyes are normal, Kim.”

“They’re n-not,” Kim admitted. “I d-don’t know what’s going on there. I th-think it m-might be a birth defect or something. Who n-no— _knows_ what kind of things they’re e-exposed t-to out here. It’s nuh-nothing. The only reason you should b-be wary is b-because it is a w-wild animal, so b-be careful.”

“It was looking right in through the window, Kim,” Aileen said simply. All her earlier hysteria had vanished; she sounded more lucid than she had in weeks. “How did it get up that high? There’s nothing there for it to stand on.”

Kim didn’t have an answer for that.

**Eleanor**

Eleanor was the only one of Kim’s wives to leave him over the whole mess. Kim never told her about it either, and in fact he was incredibly secretive with her, because by the time he met her – lovely though she was – he was fed up of talking about that aspect of his life, fed up of opening up to people, and fed up of having the situation touch absolutely everything he did. He wanted to forget about it as much as possible, he wanted to have one wife who didn’t know or who didn’t suspect, who didn’t look at him with strange expressions or keep a mental count of all the weird things that went on around him. He wanted a wife who wouldn’t notice that his nightmares all synched up to the same time of the year, he wanted a wife who wouldn’t ask questions about the strange things he could do or the strange things that followed him, and he wanted to have one section of his life be cordoned off as much as possible, safe from all the things that had plagued him since he had been too small to remember otherwise.

When Kim thought about it like that he could probably murder his father quite happily. The old bastard had been the one to do it to him, after all, and the whole mess was his fault. Kim couldn’t be sure at the time but he was also convinced that his father might have fucked it up for him, too, because things had never been the same since his tenth birthday and his father had held a resentment towards him from that day forward that was so strong it could only mean that the blame was on his shoulders. Why did fathers do that? It was something Kim pondered a lot. Why did they fuck everything up for their children and then take it out on the kid? The more his father had resented him the more Kim had known beyond all doubt that he had been the one to fuck up. He vowed every time he saw his own children that he would never make that mistake, and he supposed that he was already one step ahead of his own father – he had never dragged his children into this mess. 

Kim had gone a good many years thinking that he hated his father, so it came as a shock when the man died and Kim felt it as painfully as he would have expected to had he loved him. His father, in true style, refused to make things easy for him and decided to come back to him just as Kim thought he might be able to get used to the situation, and thank god that Eleanor hadn’t worked that part out. As far as Kim knew, she was completely unaware that there was anything strange about Kim, or about his father, or about anything. She was American and was therefore like Litzi in the way that she expected Kim to be eccentric simply because he was British; when Kim brought Jackie the fox home she assumed it was just another one of those eccentricities and accepted the animal as though it were a normal dog. Jackie was admittedly cute, but too smart for a fox – she could drink alcohol, much to the amusement of Kim’s friends, and would even smoke a pipe, and sometimes Kim swore he would catch her reading a book – and her eyes were too human, but either Eleanor hadn’t seen many foxes in her time or she had simply decided not to touch whatever the hell was going on there. In that fashion, she was at least smarter than Aileen, who had completely lost her mind and was dead now, suicide, or so everyone was saying. 

Then Jackie had died, inexplicably falling off the balcony even though she wasn’t stupid enough to do anything that would have had her plausibly fall, and her body had barely cooled before somebody had taken a pot shot at Kim’s head while he’d been in the bathroom, nearly killing him. The bullet had sailed in through the small open window and clipped Kim’s head just under the hairline, and Kim, drunker than he’d ever been in his life, had immediately started bleeding profusely. He could barely see through all the blood, but thankfully had enough presence of mind to turn and slam his head against the heater as hard as possible, smearing the blood all over it and then stumbling around as though he had hit his head. Eleanor, thankfully, had been too panicked to think too much about the logistics; several bloodsaked towels and a doctor later, she still looked about as pale as Kim.

“How are you not dead?” she asked him, when he was propped up on the pillows in bed, a thick bandage wrapped around his forehead. His head ached like a bitch, and he felt both very drunk and very hungover, though how much of that had been from the drink and how much of it from the head wound he didn’t know.

Christ. Somebody had shot him and he was bored. What did that say about him?

“It w-was j-just a small w-wound,” Kim said, his words sluggish. “Head wounds b-bleed a lot m-more than you would t-think. Even the sm-smallest one c-can bleed terribly. I’m q-quite alright.”

“The _doctor_ said if you’d had one more drink in you, you would have died,” Eleanor said, her voice gentle but with that undertone she used when she didn’t want him to argue. 

“N-Nonsense. The d-drink would have h-had nothing to d-do with it, a-aside from causing me to f-fall in the fuh- fuh- fi—to begin with,” he said dismissively. “If anything, it w-would have b-been the blood loss, and it w-wasn’t that bad.”

It was the first time that Kim saw her give him a long look, the same look that Aileen had given him when she didn’t quite believe him. She never mentioned whatever it was that she might be thinking, though, and Kim thought that it would be the last of it. Of course that wasn’t the case. Eleanor followed him to Moscow in the end but Kim knew deep down that it wouldn’t last – she didn’t look at home in Moscow, and he got the idea that she was intimidated by the Russian way of life. Certainly it took a little getting used to, and the life wasn’t as glamourous as she had no doubt imagined, and she was American and therefore found the direct and unsweetened Russian approach rather threatening, but perhaps it was all growing pains. Kim was aware of the fact that it was wishful thinking at that point, but if he were honest with himself he had bigger things to worry about.

Unfortunately those bigger things had a nasty habit of catching up with him eventually.

“What’s the deal with that woman following you?” Eleanor demanded one evening, as she cleared the dishes away from dinner. Kim was sitting exactly where she had left him, having had the tragic misfortune of drinking too much wine even for over dinner.

“What w-woman?” he snapped. He didn’t know where his impatience had come from. Maybe a subconscious realisation that the game was up, that she knew something, that she always had. Or maybe it was just because he was fed up. Or maybe she thought he was cheating on her and some woman had got obsessed with him. Who knew? If that was the case he couldn’t muster up that much sympathy for her. After all, they had met through an affair – both of them had been married when their relationship had started, and she had even been pretending it was still happily. What did she expect, when one met through those circumstances?

“You’re telling me you haven’t seen her?” Eleanor demanded. She turned to face him, her arms crossed. “She’s noticeable enough.”

“Maybe she r-r-recognised me,” Kim said monotonously. “Didn’t you k-know I’m s-something of a _celebrity_ here?”

“Unlikely,” Eleanor snorted, and Kim tried to work out if she meant it cruelly – as in, she didn’t think that anybody saw him that way, in which case congratulations on finally noticing – or if she just didn’t believe the explanation. “She’s started following me, too. Everywhere I look, there she is. I don’t know how she moves around so fast. I never see her when I get on any public transport but there she is when I get to my destination. What’s the matter with her? And I know you know who I’m talking about.”

Of course she knew. Kim had spotted her enough himself, standing there with those dark eyes boring into him, the world tilting to meet her as though she were its new centre. There were only so many times he could pretend to ignore her. Perhaps shouting at her hadn’t been the best decision, but he had been drunk and she had been insistent. Why the hell was he referring to her as ‘she’ anyway? The damn thing wasn’t even human.

“It’s probably b-best that you j-just don’t k-know,” Kim said, though his voice held none of its usual persuasion. He was exhausted. He couldn’t do this anymore, not with every damn wife he had. “I d-don’t think she’s all t-there in the h-head.”

“Oh, that’s _just_ what we need!” Eleanor said, throwing her hands up in the air. “One of your deranged fucks chasing after us. Nice, Kim.”

“You w-w- _wish_ that was all it w-was,” Kim muttered darkly. He didn’t know if it was the confirmation Eleanor had always needed, that there _was_ something awful going on, but he could tell the atmosphere in the room had changed. 

That night, as he got ready for bed, he could feel her eyes lingering on the scar he had never explained to her, on his back where the bullet had wrapped its way around his spine. He could feel her stare so vividly that it felt as though someone was pressing heat to it; when he turned around to confront her she abruptly looked away. He could still feel the stare. He realised it was coming from the window, and he forced himself not to look.

A few weeks later, Eleanor had left. Kim thought she was perhaps the smartest one yet.

**Rufina**

Rufina was fearless. It was a typical Russian reaction to the unknown, Kim thought: she was determined to never flinch, determined to never show a weak hand. If there was any wife Kim thought he truly didn’t deserve, it was Rufina. He couldn’t work out what made him so attached to her, but thought privately that maybe he was finally losing his own mind. He had no idea where she got the patience from. It didn’t seem to matter what occurred around them that she couldn’t explain, or how strange Kim’s moods were, or what odd things sent him rigid with terror, or what dark-eyed women floated silently after them on the street. Rufina took it all in her stride, and Kim was lucky to have her.

Perhaps the most hilarious thing about her was the fact that even in the face of everything, she rarely had time for any of Kim’s supernatural nonsense, as she liked to call it. They would discuss it, of course, but Rufina would give him periodic reminders that he should stop being so stupid, and that he needed to think about things more logically, and a whole load of other statements that would have destroyed him had they come from Litzi. Kim found that he needed to hear it now, that it was the closest he would ever get to having that separate space that he had longed for. 

“You tell your friend fuck off,” she would say to him, when they were out and had a visitor. It was a far cry from Eleanor’s interrogation at the dinner table, and looking at her Kim thought she did an incredibly good job at not looking intimidated in the slightest.

Sometimes Kim would ignore their visitor as best as he could. He hated to stare at her, he hated to let her see him, he hated how curious she was about him. He wondered how much she knew about him, how much she comprehended. He wondered why he couldn’t stop thinking of her as ‘she’. He wished he could stop, because in Kim’s eyes it was blatantly obvious what had happened: whoever that body had belonged to was no longer around to use it, though whether she was dead or was still trapped in there Kim didn’t want to know, and he hoped he would never have to find out. 

Other times, when there seemed to be no other choice, he would go to her. Very rarely did she do anything. For the most part they would just stare one another down, her maliciously curious, Kim exhausted. He had hoped to be done with all this. He didn’t think he ever would be.

“You are weary man,” Rufina told him, the evening of one such encounter. “Is like she takes life from you, staring like that.”

“It feels like she d-does,” Kim agreed dully. He took a large gulp from his drink; after a stern look from Rufina, he changed it to sips that could perhaps pass for polite.

“What is story with her?” Rufina asked. “You have history, which is strange, because she is not human.”

Kim looked at her in alarm. “Ex-excuse me?”

“You think I do not know?” Rufina asked, laughing, and her laugh didn’t cover anything up – no nerves, no anger. She genuinely found it amusing.

“Well, I –” Kim broke off, frowning. “I th-thought it would c-c— you w-would bring it u-u— _up_ sooner if you k-knew.”

“I thought it would be obvious,” Rufina said, shrugging her shoulders. “Every child in Russia knows of the legends. Is just that most think that is all they are – legends. Something to tell to scare the children in the winter. Make them be good. Is not real. Or maybe it is? Who can tell.”

“Does that…” Kim started, before swallowing and starting again. “Are you n-not bothered by this?”

“By what? She has not hurt you yet.”

“A lot of p-people find her o-off-putting,” Kim said, putting it mildly. 

“I suppose I am curious. Perhaps is not good thing. But you are my husband, so I feel I am allowed to ask about other women.” She smiled, letting him know she was teasing, at least about that point. “Is strange, no? You are person, and she is not, and yet _she_ seems to be interested in _you_. I would have thought other way. You look like you’ve seen too much of things like her to be impressed.”

Kim had forgotten how perceptive women could be. Christ, there had been a time where he had thought he could pull the wool over his wives’ eyes. How many of them had known far more than they were letting on? At least he hadn’t married anyone liable to talk too much, with the exception of Aileen, he supposed, but she had been raving mad and nobody had ever put any weight behind her words. 

He didn’t want to tell her. Over the years Kim had come to the conclusion that once his wives found out under no uncertain terms what was going on, they would leave. He knew it was irrational. After all, Litzi hadn’t left him; that had been circumstance. Aileen had been mad and had eventually started telling everyone who would listen that he was a Russian spy. Eleanor had clearly hated Moscow. There were other factors everywhere, but Kim had lived a life full of stranger things. Would it really be out of line to say that it wasn’t a common denominator?

And now Rufina knew. She was watching him now, her face slightly curious but not showing anything else she might be thinking. She was expecting an answer, Kim knew that. He didn’t know what to tell her. 

“I see things like her,” he eventually said, clearing his throat. “S-strange things. I always h-have. I’m sorry, b-but I don’t know why. Something h-happened when I was a b-baby, and then th-that was that.”

“You were born with it?” Rufina asked. “Like a gift.”

“I s-suppose,” Kim said, but he couldn’t let himself be silent on that much. “I d-don’t see it as a gift.”

“Why not? Do you not find it interesting?”

“N-no. I want to be l-left alone. I d-don’t think h-human beings are supposed to see some t-things. Don’t you a-agree? There are s-some things that we are just n-not meant to kn-know?” Kim shook his head and then took another gulp of his drink; this time, Rufina didn’t scold him. “It’s c-caused me n-no _end_ of tr-trouble and I j-just want a b- _break_ from it! It is n- _not_ a gift.”

Rufina gave a small smile. She looked sorry for him, Kim thought, and ordinarily the realisation would have made him feel ashamed of himself: he couldn’t imagine what he would do if any of his other wives had pitied him so openly. This time he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was so tired, and so thoroughly _finished_ with all of this. To know that it was unavoidable, and that in the morning he would have to find some way to drag himself out of bed and do it all again? He couldn’t imagine it.

“It’s _ruined_ me,” he continued, unable to stop himself. “I t-think everyone knew it. I th-think they could s-sense it. Why else do I h-have nobody now? Why else d-does everyone l-leave me here?”

There was a long pause.

“I won’t leave you here,” Rufina said quietly. 

Kim swallowed down whatever he was going to say next and tried to believe her. The next day, to make sure, he hid her shoes.


End file.
